Washington (CNN)Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain, a freshman Republican member of Congress, made a series of false claims in a short speech at former President Donald Trump's rally outside Detroit on Saturday -- notably including an assertion that Trump, who has endorsed her for re-election, was the president who caught terrorist Osama bin Laden.
McClain's office didn't respond to requests for comment on her remarks. Let's run through four of the things she said in her address, which ran for under six minutes.
Rattling off what she claimed were Trump accomplishments, McClain said, "Caught Osama bin Laden and Soleimani, al-Baghdadi."
Facts First: McClain's claim about bin Laden is false. Bin Laden, the leader of terrorist group al Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan in a 2011 raid ordered by then-President Barack Obama. Trump took office in 2017.
Trump did order the 2020 drone strike in Iraq that killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and he did preside over the 2019 raid in Syria that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Criticizing the state of the economy under President Joe Biden, McClain said, "Unemployment: 40-year high."
Facts First: False again. The unemployment rate is actually near a 52-year low, not at a 40-year high. The rate in March was 3.6% -- just a tick higher than the Trump-era low of 3.5%, which was the lowest since late 1969.
The unemployment rate has fallen...
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